Going to Meet the Man Page 8

  Jules was making coffee when I walked in.

  “Good morning, good morning! What happened to you?”

  “No room at the inn,” I said. “Pour a cup of coffee for the notorious son of man. I sat down and dropped my suitcase on the floor.”

  Jules looked at me. “Oh. Well. Coffee coming up.”

  He got out the coffee cups. I lit a cigarette and sat there. I couldn’t think of anything to say. I knew that Jules felt bad and I wanted to tell him that it wasn’t his fault.

  He pushed coffee in front of me and sugar and cream.

  “Cheer up, baby. The world’s wide and life—life, she is very long.”

  “Shut up. I don’t want to hear any of your bad philosophy.”

  “Sorry.”

  “I mean, let’s not talk about the good, the true, and the beautiful.”

  “All right. But don’t sit there holding onto your table manners. Scream if you want to.”

  “Screaming won’t do any good. Besides I’m a big boy now.”

  I stirred my coffee. “Did you give her a fight?” Jules asked.

  I shook my head. “No.”

  “Why the hell not?”

  I shrugged; a little ashamed now. I couldn’t have won it. What the hell.

  “You might have won it. You might have given her a couple of bad moments.”

  “Goddamit to hell, I’m sick of it. Can’t I get a place to sleep without dragging it through the courts? I’m goddamn tired of battling every Tom, Dick, and Harry for what everybody else takes for granted. I’m tired, man, tired! Have you ever been sick to death of something? Well, I’m sick to death. And I’m scared. I’ve been fighting so goddamn long I’m not a person any more. I’m not Booker T. Washington. I’ve got no vision of emancipating anybody. I want to emancipate myself. If this goes on much longer, they’ll send me to Bellevue, I’ll blow my top, I’ll break somebody’s head. I’m not worried about that miserable little room. I’m worried about what’s happening to me, to me, inside. I don’t walk the streets, I crawl. I’ve never been like this before. Now when I go to a strange place I wonder what will happen, will I be accepted, if I’m accepted, can I accept?—”

  “Take it easy,” Jules said.

  “Jules, I’m beaten.”

  “I don’t think you are. Drink your coffee.”

  “Oh,” I cried, “I know you think I’m making it dramatic, that I’m paranoiac and just inventing trouble! Maybe I think so sometimes, how can I tell? You get so used to being hit you find you’re always waiting for it. Oh, I know, you’re Jewish, you get kicked around, too, but you can walk into a bar and nobody knows you’re Jewish and if you go looking for a job you’ll get a better job than mine! How can I say what it feels like? I don’t know. I know everybody’s in trouble and nothing is easy, but how can I explain to you what it feels like to be black when I don’t understand it and don’t want to and spend all my time trying to forget it? I don’t want to hate anybody—but now maybe, I can’t love anybody either—are we friends? Can we be really friends?”

  “We’re friends,” Jules said, “don’t worry about it.” He scowled. “If I wasn’t Jewish I’d ask you why you don’t live in Harlem.” I looked at him. He raised his hand and smiled—“But I’m Jewish, so I didn’t ask you. Ah Peter,” he said, “I can’t help you—take a walk, get drunk, we’re all in this together.”

  I stood up. “I’ll be around later. I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be sorry. I’ll leave my door open. Bunk here for awhile.”

  “Thanks,” I said.

  I felt that I was drowning; that hatred had corrupted me like cancer in the bone.

  I saw Ida for dinner. We met in a restaurant in the Village, an Italian place in a gloomy cellar with candles on the tables.

  It was not a busy night, for which I was grateful. When I came in there were only two other couples on the other side of the room. No one looked at me. I sat down in a corner booth and ordered a Scotch old-fashioned. Ida was late and I had three of them before she came.

  She was very fine in black, a high-necked dress with a pearl choker; and her hair was combed page-boy style, falling just below her ears.

  “You look real sweet, baby.”

  “Thank you. It took fifteen extra minutes but I hoped it would be worth it.”

  “It was worth it. What’re you drinking?”

  “Oh—what’re you drinking?”

  “Old-fashioneds.”

  She sniffed and looked at me. “How many?”

  I laughed. “Three.”

  “Well,” she said, “I suppose you had to do something.” The waiter came over. We decided on one Manhattan and one lasagna and one spaghetti with clam sauce and another old-fashioned for me.

  “Did you have a constructive day, sweetheart? Find a job?”

  “Not today,” I said. I lit her cigarette. “Metro offered me a fortune to come to the coast and do the lead in Native Son but I turned it down. Type casting, you know. It’s so difficult to find a decent part.”

  “Well, if they don’t come up with a decent offer soon tell them you’ll go back to Selznick. He’ll find you a part with guts—the very idea of offering you Native Son! I wouldn’t stand for it.”

  “You ain’t gotta tell me. I told them if they didn’t find me a decent script in two weeks I was through, that’s all.”

  “Now that’s talking, Peter my lad.”

  The drinks came and we sat in silence for a minute or two. I finished half of my drink at a swallow and played with the toothpicks on the table. I felt Ida watching me.

  “Peter, you’re going to be awfully drunk.”

  “Honeychile, the first thing a southern gentleman learns is how to hold his liquor.”

  “That myth is older than the rock of ages. And anyway you come from Jersey.”

  I finished my drink and snarled at her: “That’s just as good as the South.”

  Across the table from me I could see that she was readying herself for trouble: her mouth tightened slightly, setting her chin so that the faint cleft showed: “What happened to you today?”

  I resented her concern; I resented my need. “Nothing worth talking about,” I muttered, “just a mood.”

  And I tried to smile at her, to wipe away the bitterness.

  “Now I know something’s the matter. Please tell me.”

  It sounded trivial as hell: “You know the room Jules found for me? Well, the landlady kicked me out of it today.”

  “God save the American republic,” Ida said. “D’you want to waste some of my husband’s money? We can sue her.”

  “Forget it. I’ll end up with lawsuits in every state in the union.”

  “Still, as a gesture—”

  “The devil with the gesture. I’ll get by.”

  The food came. I didn’t want to eat. The first mouthful hit my belly like a gong. Ida began cutting up lasagna.

  “Peter,” she said, “try not to feel so badly. We’re all in this together the whole world. Don’t let it throw you. What can’t be helped you have to learn to live with.”

  “That’s easy for you to say,” I told her.

  She looked at me quickly and looked away. “I’m not pretending that it’s easy to do,” she said.

  I didn’t believe that she could really understand it; and there was nothing I could say. I sat like a child being scolded, looking down at my plate, not eating, not saying anything. I wanted her to stop talking, to stop being intelligent about it, to stop being calm and grown-up about it; good Lord, none of us has ever grown up, we never will.

  “It’s no better anywhere else,” she was saying. “In all of Europe there’s famine and disease, in France and England they hate the Jews—nothing’s going to change, baby, people are too empty-headed, too empty-hearted—it’s always been like that, people always try to destroy what they don’t understand—and they hate almost everything because they understand so little—”

  I began to sweat in my side of the booth. I wan
ted to stop her voice. I wanted her to eat and be quiet and leave me alone. I looked around for the waiter so I could order another drink. But he was on the far side of the restaurant, waiting on some people who had just come in; a lot of people had come in since we had been sitting there.

  “Peter,” Ida said, “Peter please don’t look like that.”

  I grinned: the painted grin of the professional clown. “Don’t worry, baby, I’m all right. I know what I’m going to do. I’m gonna go back to my people where I belong and find me a nice, black nigger wench and raise me a flock of babies.”

  Ida had an old maternal trick; the grin tricked her into using it now. She raised her fork and rapped me with it across the knuckles. “Now, stop that. You’re too old for that.”

  I screamed and stood up screaming and knocked the candle over: “Don’t do that, you bitch, don’t ever do that!”

  She grabbed the candle and set it up and glared at me. Her face had turned perfectly white: “Sit down! Sit down!”

  I fell back into my seat. My stomach felt like water. Everyone was looking at us. I turned cold, seeing what they were seeing: a black boy and a white woman, alone together. I knew it would take nothing to have them at my throat.

  “I’m sorry,” I muttered, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

  The waiter was at my elbow. “Is everything all right, miss?”

  “Yes, quite, thank you.” She sounded like a princess dismissing a slave. I didn’t look up. The shadow of the waiter moved away from me.

  “Baby,” Ida said, “forgive me, please forgive me.”

  I stared at the tablecloth. She put her hand on mine, brightness and blackness.

  “Let’s go,” I said, “I’m terribly sorry.”

  She motioned for the check. When it came she handed the waiter a ten dollar bill without looking. She picked up her bag.

  “Shall we go to a nightclub or a movie or something?”

  “No, honey, not tonight.” I looked at her. “I’m tired, I think I’ll go on over to Jules’s place. I’m gonna sleep on his floor for a while. Don’t worry about me. I’m all right.”

  She looked at me steadily. She said: “I’ll come see you tomorrow?”

  “Yes, baby, please.”

  The waiter brought the change and she tipped him. We stood up; as we passed the tables (not looking at the people) the ground under me seemed falling, the doorway seemed impossibly far away. All my muscles tensed; I seemed ready to spring; I was waiting for the blow.

  I put my hands in my pockets and we walked to the end of the block. The lights were green and red, the lights from the theater across the street exploded blue and yellow, off and on.

  “Peter?”

  “Yes?”

  “I’ll see you tomorrow?”

  “Yeah. Come by Jules’s. I’ll wait for you.”

  “Goodnight, darling.”

  “Goodnight.”

  I started to walk away. I felt her eyes on my back. I kicked a bottle-top on the sidewalk.

  God save the American republic.

  I dropped into the subway and got on an uptown train, not knowing where it was going and not caring. Anonymous, islanded people surrounded me, behind newspapers, behind make-up, fat, fleshy masks and flat eyes. I watched the empty faces. (No one looked at me.) I looked at the ads, unreal women and pink-cheeked men selling cigarettes, candy, shaving cream, nightgowns, chewing gum, movies, sex; sex without organs, drier than sand and more secret than death. The train stopped. A white boy and a white girl got on. She was nice, short, svelte. Nice legs. She was hanging on his arm. He was the football type, blond, ruddy. They were dressed in summer clothes. The wind from the doors blew her print dress. She squealed, holding the dress at the knees and giggled and looked at him. He said something I didn’t catch and she looked at me and the smile died. She stood so that she faced him and had her back to me. I looked back at the ads. Then I hated them. I wanted to do something to make them hurt, something that would crack the pink-cheeked mask. The white boy and I did not look at each other again. They got off at the next stop.

  I wanted to keep on drinking. I got off in Harlem and went to a rundown bar on Seventh Avenue. My people, my people. Sharpies stood on the corner, waiting. Women in summer dresses pranced by on wavering heels. Click clack. Click clack. There were white mounted policemen in the streets. On every block there was another policeman on foot. I saw a black cop.

  God save the American republic.

  The juke box was letting loose with “Hamps’ Boogie.” The place was jumping, I walked over to the man.

  “Rye,” I said.

  I was standing next to somebody’s grandmother. “Hello, papa. What you puttin’ down?”

  “Baby, you can’t pick it up,” I told her. My rye came and I drank.

  “Nigger,” she said, “you must think you’s somebody.”

  I didn’t answer. She turned away, back to her beer, keeping time to the juke box, her face sullen and heavy and aggrieved. I watched her out of the side of my eye. She had been good looking once, pretty even, before she hit the bottle and started crawling into too many beds. She was flabby now, flesh heaved all over in her thin dress. I wondered what she’d be like in bed; then I realized that I was a little excited by her; I laughed and set my glass down.

  “The same,” I said. “And a beer chaser.”

  The juke box was playing something else now, something brassy and commercial which I didn’t like. I kept on drinking, listening to the voices of my people, watching the faces of my people. (God pity us, the terrified republic.) Now I was sorry to have angered the woman who still sat next to me, now deep in conversation with another, younger woman. I longed for some opening, some sign, something to make me part of the life around me. But there was nothing except my color. A white outsider coming in would have seen a young Negro drinking in a Negro bar, perfectly in his element, in his place, as the saying goes. But the people here knew differently, as I did. I didn’t seem to have a place.

  So I kept on drinking by myself, saying to myself after each drink, Now I’ll go. But I was afraid; I didn’t want to sleep on Jules’s floor; I didn’t want to go to sleep. I kept on drinking and listening to the juke box. They were playing Ella Fitzgerald, “Cow-Cow Boogie.”

  “Let me buy you a drink,” I said to the woman.

  She looked at me, startled, suspicious, ready to blow her top.

  “On the level,” I said. I tried to smile. “Both of you.”

  “I’ll take a beer,” the young one said.

  I was shaking like a baby. I finished my drink.

  “Fine,” I said. I turned to the bar.

  “Baby,” said the old one, “what’s your story?”

  The man put three beers on the counter.

  “I got no story, Ma,” I said.

  Sonny’s Blues

  I READ ABOUT IT in the the paper, in the subway, on my way to work. I read it, and I couldn’t believe it, and I read it again. Then perhaps I just stared at it, at the newsprint spelling out his name, spelling out the story. I stared at it in the swinging lights of the subway car, and in the faces and bodies of the people, and in my own face, trapped in the darkness which roared outside.

  It was not to be believed and I kept telling myself that, as I walked from the subway station to the high school. And at the same time I couldn’t doubt it. I was scared, scared for Sonny. He became real to me again. A great block of ice got settled in my belly and kept melting there slowly all day long, while I taught my classes algebra. It was a special kind of ice. It kept melting, sending trickles of ice water all up and down my veins, but it never got less. Sometimes it hardened and seemed to expand until I felt my guts were going to come spilling out or that I was going to choke or scream. This would always be at a moment when I was remembering some specific thing Sonny had once said or done.

  When he was about as old as the boys in my classes his face had been bright and open, there was a lot of copper in it; and he’d had wonderfully di
rect brown eyes, and great gentleness and privacy. I wondered what he looked like now. He had been picked up, the evening before, in a raid on an apartment downtown, for peddling and using heroin.

  I couldn’t believe it: but what I mean by that is that I couldn’t find any room for it anywhere inside me. I had kept it outside me for a long time. I hadn’t wanted to know. I had had suspicions, but I didn’t name them, I kept putting them away. I told myself that Sonny was wild, but he wasn’t crazy. And he’d always been a good boy, he hadn’t ever turned hard or evil or disrespectful, the way kids can, so quick, so quick, especially in Harlem. I didn’t want to believe that I’d ever see my brother going down, coming to nothing, all that light in his face gone out, in the condition I’d already seen so many others. Yet it had happened and here I was, talking about algebra to a lot of boys who might, every one of them for all I knew, be popping off needles every time they went to the head. Maybe it did more for them than algebra could.

  I was sure that the first time Sonny had ever had horse, he couldn’t have been much older than these boys were now. These boys, now, were living as we’d been living then, they were growing up with a rush and their heads bumped abruptly against the low ceiling of their actual possibilities. They were filled with rage. All they really knew were two darknesses, the darkness of their lives, which was now closing in on them, and the darkness of the movies, which had blinded them to that other darkness, and in which they now, vindictively, dreamed, at once more together than they were at any other time, and more alone.

  When the last bell rang, the last class ended, I let out my breath. It seemed I’d been holding it for all that time. My clothes were wet—I may have looked as though I’d been sitting in a steam bath, all dressed up, all afternoon. I sat alone in the classroom a long time. I listened to the boys outside, downstairs, shouting and cursing and laughing. Their laughter struck me for perhaps the first time. It was not the joyous laughter which—God knows why—one associates with children. It was mocking and insular, its intent was to denigrate. It was disenchanted, and in this, also, lay the authority of their curses. Perhaps I was listening to them because I was thinking about my brother and in them I heard my brother. And myself.